A blow mold in a typical glassware forming machine includes at least one pair of mold halves that are brought together around a bottom plate to form the blow mold cavity. The bottom plate typically includes a central air passage for receiving cooling wind to cool the portion of the bottom plate against which the glass is blown, and one or more vacuum passages for feeding vacuum to the blow mold sections to help draw the glass against the mold surfaces during the blowing operation. The bottom plate is mounted on a base that has a floating spud for receipt into the central air passage of the bottom plate and a fixed annular ring around the spud for receipt within an annular recess at a lower end of the bottom plate. An absence of adequate sealing between the spud and its mounting base, and between the spud and the bottom plate, results in leakage of cooling wind to the vacuum passage in the mounting base. Furthermore, fixed mounting of the outer ring on the base necessitates a fairly large annular gap between the outer ring and the opposing surface of the annular recess in the bottom plate, so that the seal carried by the outer ring is largely unsupported and prone to fracture when installing the bottom plate over the outer ring. A general object of the present disclosure is to provide a bottom plate mounting arrangement in a glassware forming machine that addresses one or more of these deficiencies in the prior art.
The present disclosure embodies a number of aspects that can be implemented separately from or in combination with each other.
A glassware mold bottom plate mounting arrangement in a glassware forming machine, in accordance with one aspect of the present disclosure, includes a floating ring captured by a cap plate on a base for limited lateral movement with respect to the base and the cap plate. A hollow spud is rigidly secured to and extends from the ring. A cooling wind passage in the base opens through the hollow spud, and a vacuum passage in the base opens through the ring at a position spaced from the spud. A glassware mold bottom plate is removably telescopically received over the ring and the spud. The bottom plate has a central air passage received over the spud, an annular recess received over the ring, and a peripheral air passage that opens into the annular recess such that the central and peripheral air passages open to the cooling wind and vacuum passages in the base through the spud and the ring respectively. The spud and the ring preferably have external seals in respective sliding sealing engagement with the central air passage and the annular recess in the bottom plate. There preferably are face seals between the base and the floating ring, and between the ring and an undersurface of the cap plate.